The small-budget film Beasts of the Southern Wild sent shock waves through the Oscar nominations Thursday.

The film about a group of people coping with the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in the Louisiana bayou, was nominated as best picture and its nine-year-old star, Quvenzhane Wallis, becomes the youngest ever nominee as best actress. First-time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin was also nominated as best director.

Overall, Steven Spielberg’s biopic Lincoln, about the efforts to outlaw slavery in the U.S., led the pack with 12 nominations and Ang Lee’s fantasy Life of Pi, based on Canadian author Yann Martel’s book about a boy trapped in a boat with a Bengal tiger, got 11.

The Canadian film Rebelle (War Witch in English) was nominated as best foreign language film. Directed by Montreal filmmaker Kim Nguyen, it tells the story of a young girl in an unnamed African country who is kidnapped and forced to become a child soldier. Toronto composer Mychael Danna received two nominations, for original score and original song, for Life of Pi.

The nominees for best picture are Beasts of the Southern Wild, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Miserables, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Amour, Django Unchained and Argo. The longshot film — Skyfall, the new James Bond movie — didn’t make the cut in a year when the Bond franchise will be saluted at the Oscar ceremonies.

The Academy Awards will be presented Feb. 24.

There were several big names missing in the directing field. Kathryn Bigelow, touted as a frontrunner as best director for Zero Dark Thirty — the documentary -like story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden — was not nominated. Neither was Ben Affleck, who won praise for the tense re-creation of the Iranian hostage crisis in Argo.

The field includes Zeitlin, Lee, Spielberg, David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) and Austrian director Michael Haneke — known for such fraught dramas as Funny Games — who was nominated for his tender drama Amour, a Cannes film festival favourite about an elderly couple facing the end of their lives. Its 89-year-old French star Emanuelle Riva becomes the oldest ever best actress nominee.

The other nominees for best actress are Naomi Watts (The Impossible), Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook). Missing from the list was Marion Cotillard, an early favourite for her portrayal of a woman who loses her legs in Rust & Bone.

The nominees for best actor are Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln), Denzel Washington (Flight), Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables), Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook) and Joaquin Phoenix (The Master.) Prominent among the missing is John Hawkes, who had been touted for recognition as a paralyzed man in The Sessions.

The nominees for best supporting actor are Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master), Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook), Alan Arkin (Argo) and Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln.) All are former Oscar winners. Missing from the list was the longshot performance of Javier Bardem as the villain in the James Bond film Skyfall.

The supporting actress nominees are Sally Field (Lincoln), Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables), Jackie Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook), Helen Hunt (The Sessions), and Amy Adams (The Master). Weaver’s nomination was the biggest surprise in the category: observers had predicted that Nicole Kidman — who memorably pees on Zac Efron in The Paperboy — or Judi Dench, playing a retired woman who finds love in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, might be nominated.